


like a bell, hung in my heart

by silver_atalanta



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, broken!belle, i dont know, season1 spoilers, written right after skin deep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-12
Updated: 2013-10-12
Packaged: 2017-12-29 04:18:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1000794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_atalanta/pseuds/silver_atalanta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>she is a princess. she is pretty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like a bell, hung in my heart

like a bell, hung in my--  
()  
Her name is Belle. She is beautiful, and everyone tells her that. She is a princess. She is lovely beautiful Belle. 

Except that she isn’t. 

There is something wild in her chest that has a face. A face with sharp yellow teeth and the eyes of a lizard, skin of ash.

A beast. 

Yes, a beast, lurking in behind her ribcage and rattling the bones of her with sharp, piercing laughs that plunge into her like a thousand arrows, no inch of flesh untouched. 

“Tell me we’ll have a happy ending,” she whispers, once, twice, an inch away from this beast’s mouth. Pleading, pretty eyes so wide and wide and wide. 

And the beast pulls back his lips in a parody of a smile and it is an answer.  
()

It is a love story, Belle says. It is a love story and we love each other, I know we do, even if you break my bones and shatter my heart and take everything I have without giving anything back. 

Pretty Belle, so naïve for all you think you know. Reading all your little books, with all those happy endings. Don’t you see? Some ending can’t end happily. Some things just end, like this, like you and me. 

It is a love story, Belle cries. I’m the princess in the tower. Save me, save me. 

And pretty Belle says “no.”  
()  
These are the things she knows: Her tower is a locked cell with dark liquid eyes peering from the shadows, the sickly light from a single window, medications and cold, so cold seeping into her skin. 

These are the things she keeps: The press of lips, the way the sunlight shines through windows without curtains, the sound of a wheel turning straw to gold, a porcelain cup with a chip on a table of roses. 

These are the things that she will do: Slay a queen with liquid eyes, find a beast amongst a ruined castle, kiss a man she knew once, knew now, knew always and find a happily ever after in a world where they (happily ever afters, them, them) no longer exist. 

They will exist. At night he creeps into her dreams and calls her lovely, his Belle, and he is crying and he is apologizing. It is just dreams, but then it isn’t. 

She takes her medication. She sleeps standing up. 

She is still so very pretty. 

She is so very broken, chipped. 

Pretty.  
()

My name is Belle, she tells him as they walk towards a looming estate. It is the end of her old life and the beginning of her new one. 

His name is evil but his hand is gentle on her back. She is radiant at his side, the sun, the moon and the stars, unreachable but his now, his. 

I know, he says. I know Belle.  
()

Somewhere in a dark tower a princess is reading her name in a fairy tale and ripping out the pages, one by one. She doesn’t have a name and if she does, it’s lost in shadows, in the mouth of a man who looks like a beast and loves her with a chipped heart. 

Even in here she is beautiful. Curses don’t have to be ugly, do they?

She is a princess. 

()  
\--heart

()()()()()()()

"--like a golden bell hung in my heart. I would break my body to pieces just to call you once by your name."--Peter Beagle, The Last Unicorn

Thanks for reading!


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